


Small pictures

by aesc



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Domestic, Erik has Feelings, Fix-It, Future Fic, Introspection, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Protective Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 12:14:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2692580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesc/pseuds/aesc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Watergate and Vietnam, the world moves on and mutants aren't threats or scapegoats anymore. Erik, exhausted after years of fighting a war that doesn't want to be fought, tries to find a new mission. Charles presents himself as a possibility.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small pictures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [listerinezero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/listerinezero/gifts).



> The title is adapted from Norma Desmond's line in _Sunset Boulevard_ : "I _am_ big; it's the pictures that got small." I tried to include at least some bit of all the prompts, since they worked together so nicely, so here is some Erik trying to adjust to life at the school and negotiate life with Charles, learning how to help Charles out while being barred from teaching (or doing or thinking) anything controversial, helping Charles be dapper and being dapper himself along the way. I hope you like it, darling!

Erik had never explored the entire mansion in the few weeks he'd spent there, during what he'd realized was the beginning and the end, and at the time he had thought he hadn't paid attention to the oppressive, repetitive luxury of the house. The hallways and their paintings, sculpture, woodwork -- they blended together in the way hotel rooms did, or airplane cabins, into anonymous space. What he'd learned of it had been bare bones: the weight room and the tunnels hidden underneath the foundation, his bedroom. Charles's bedroom. The satellite.

Today, he orbits restlessly around the perimeter, feeling out the reinforcements in the fence line and the new satellite that towers on the north lawn. With the sun on the decline into late afternoon, the students are finishing lunch and headed to study session, skills training, or class. He shakes his head at the thought that he knows their schedule better than his own, that he doesn't need to be a telepath to know all sixty-five of them are counting down the days until exams and their holiday break. 

Five hours left. He breaks into a jog, the fall breeze cool on bare thighs and through his t-shirt. The path offers some reassurance, the dirt shiny down and damp from the snowmelt of two days ago. It's been nine months since this path had been frozen over and he'd skulked along it, waiting for that elusive flicker across his awareness that meant _Charles_ and wondering if he'd be turned around and marched back to where he'd come from, or if Charles would let him stay.

On days like today, he's not sure of the answer. The possibility of being sure would frighten him, if he wanted to admit to fear.

( _It's not a weakness, to admit you're afraid_ , he can hear Charles saying, indulgent and kind as if he's talking to an anxious student, tone precisely calculated to get Erik's back up. _Once you admit it, you can move forward. You can conquer it._ )

Breath whistles in his lungs as he pounds uphill. Fifteen years ago, he'd probably run up this path, between beeches and oaks, harrying Raven or Sean through another mile. Other footprints flash under him, some of them with three spreading toes, others with five -- Hank's, coming twenty or thirty feet apart and deeper than the students' sneakered feet. 

He has to tune out the moaning when the kids go on about one of Logan or Hank's forced marches around the estate, or settle for a kind of silence he's learned from Charles: ominous and disapproving. _Disappointment, rather_ , Charles had said one day over a five-minute break, while Erik loomed and watched every swallow of tea. _It's my secret weapon._ That secret, sly delight had flickered in his eyes, a silent invitation for Erik to share his joke, a moment only before Charles turned back to work.

Charles is still working now, Erik's fairly sure. His sense of the day tells him Charles is done with his one class and, rather than taking extra time to get ready to go out, is trying to cram in a last few minutes of work.

Ten minutes later, once he bounds into the house, its halls echoing faintly with his footsteps and distant voices, he finds those last few minutes have stretched out into vague plans to beg off tonight's outing in favor of reviewing plans for Hank's outsized new Danger Room and worrying about some parents who are on the verge of withdrawing their students. The decision hovers just on the edge of being made, with half-articulated thoughts on how to phrase refusals and equivocations. Erik can't tell if Charles is consciously projecting or not -- not, very likely, with the impressions ragged at the edges, as if the threads holding them together are coming undone. Erik scowls. Disappointment indeed.

"I'm sorry," Charles says as Erik stalks into his office. He doesn't look up. Hank's blueprints are rolled up in a stack on one side of the desk. It's the students, then.

"Our reservations are for seven." Erik pours a dram of whiskey. Unlike old days, he has to go around Charles's desk and bend down to open the bottom right drawer to get to it. Kneeling by Charles's side like this, no matter that Erik's done it dozens of times, seems dangerously intimate, more so because Charles has never acknowledged it. That knowledge hangs between them, though, communicated in electricity that runs back and forth, an invisible circuit.

Erik plunks the tumbler down by Charles's right hand, nods when Charles drops his pen and runs his fingers across the rim of the glass.

"Warren, Sarah, and Betsy can wait," Erik says. 

He stands; Charles's gaze follows the line of his body up his thighs and hips and chest to his face. Erik tries for something like the old haughtiness that could goad Charles out of his damned serenity and into annoyance. With a scowl, Charles looks down, into the amber prism of his drink.

"I really don't have time, Erik--"

"You do. You had time in your diary when I asked you last week."

" _Told_ me last week."

"Because you needed to be told." Unlike Charles, Erik doesn't look away. A memory uncurls on a wave of nausea: looking down at Charles huddled against the bulkhead of his fancy plane as Erik vented ten years of fury on him. Erik takes a few steps back. "I don't think you've left the estate once in the past two weeks. All work and no play, Charles."

"There's so much to do, and more every day," Charles says. The metal skeleton of his wheelchair shifts and creaks arthritically. Its flimsiness offends Erik on many levels. Charles laughs; of course he's eavesdropping. "Is that your next project? Making me a better wheelchair?"

"If humans can't do it right," Erik grumbles. A pause follows, in which Charles takes a diplomatic sip of whiskey. It's probably too close to the kinds of thoughts Charles had said would get him kicked out, but eight months on his best behavior should get Erik some liberties. "I'm half afraid it's going to splinter if I touch it. It's not like you to permit such shoddy work, Charles."

Charles shrugs. "We've been through much, this chair and I." The tone is the sort of elaborate, polished casualness that says Charles isn't going to tolerate much more of Erik's prodding. It's close to an old wound -- many old wounds, one low on Charles's back, the other a scar on his forehead, beneath the ill-disciplined tousle of Charles's hair. The chair is the one Charles had been in that day in the stadium, put back together when Charles could have easily paid for something ten times better.

"I need a half-hour or so to get ready." There's no point in going down that path. Erik wants to press the issue, to press and press until Charles breaks, but almost a year has taught him when pressing will earn him backlash that takes him full in the face and when it earns him a dangerous silence. It's something perilously close to learning patience, without a target to wait for. "Are you going to be ready by then?"

"Maybe," Charles says mulishly. His eyes are bright in the soft light of the study, though, more of that secret humor that teases a smile onto Erik's lips before he can stop it.

"I'll see you at quarter to five, then," Erik says, and leaves before Charles can find a new way to be obstinate.

His rooms are the rooms he'd had when he'd been here more than ten years gone -- his rooms, with the same woodwork and bed and Baroque painting on the wall, the same but different. His clothes are in the bureau and not the suitcase, a pair of shoes kicked casually half underneath the bed, which is sloppily made. Erik toes off his running shoes and socks, feels the rough pile of the carpet under bare feet, walks out of shorts and t-shirts into the shower.

Bathing and dressing is his mission preparation now, and this mission is one step in a larger objective that has, somehow, become what dominates Erik's life. He doesn't examine the change too closely, or the path that's taken him between then-there -- that rainy night, washing up at Charles's door, exhausted and alone -- and now-here -- with reservations at 21 and an exhibition opening at the Metropolitan. It's easier to dry his hair and shave, to levitate his favorite cufflinks from his drawer and polish them with a thought.

 _Last year, you couldn't have done this._ Nixon's resignation had come, ironically, too late. Erik had worn himself to a dull edge with running -- or perhaps, like an over-sharpened blade, honed himself to the sharp edge of breaking. With Nixon's end, and Ford scrambling desperately to repair the damage done as Vietnam wound to its conclusion, hunting down a lone mutant had lost importance. _Erik_ had lost importance, and with it, the anger that had driven him on.

So all that was left, he thinks as he pulls on undershirt and dress shirt, running his hands down the buttons to fasten them, was to go to Charles and ask for help. Shelter at first, and Charles had allowed him to stay on trial. _Trial by ordeal_ , Erik had thought, forging through Logan's dire glares and Hank's quiet growls. Like sticking his hand into the fire and holding it there, then bandaging it and waiting to see if it would fester.

The past several months have been spent picking those bandages off. He's beginning to suspect what lies underneath. Charles lets Erik gently push and tug him into mornings off, or chess games at night instead of paperwork, or physical therapy for his legs. He lets Erik reinforce the house's foundation and clad the walls with titanium. He doesn't frown warningly at Erik when kids skitter around him or come to him with curiosity on their faces. Many of them are too young to know much about the world, but others are older, and they remember him from a few years ago. Erik doesn't ask them _Do you know what's waiting for you out there? Do you know what hatred is?_

Dressed, he examines himself in the mirror. 

The newer fashions aren't quite as sleek as he'd like, but a life on the run had taught him to be understated: navy, slim-cut trousers and almost austere jacket over a vest, deep red tie. He slides the clip over the tie, shivering at silk against the simple silver band. Where Charles still keeps his hair long, on the border of respectability, Erik keeps his hair shorter. It's a reminder, maybe, of a discipline that's slipped, or changed focus.

One splash of aftershave and he reminds himself of -- well, himself, a decade ago, hunting and alive, slicing through the banking districts of Europe and the resorts of South America. _Minus the assassinations and revenge killings, I hope_ , Charles sends, amusement wrapping around Erik -- not quite an embrace, but close.

It's close to what they'd been. Erik straightens his tie and turns away from the mirror. It's so close to what they'd had in those few weeks, from the moment Charles had hauled him to the surface of the Gulf to the moment he'd put the helmet on. He can still see Charles's face, ten years and a lifetime younger, still open with the strange, worldly innocence of a man who'd never had everything taken from him, giving all of himself to Erik freely.

Erik will get that back, if he can.

He heads downstairs, ignoring the gaping students as they clatter by on the steps, and even more pointedly ignoring Logan. The students are all crowding away from the classroom areas as if more work might materialize if they don't get away fast enough, a tide of teenage exuberance and vague grubbiness and noise. Logan stumps away through the door leading to the ballroom that's now the dining hall.  
 _The more things change, the more they stay the same?_ Erik follows the thread of Charles's projection through to the study, follows the memory trail Charles lays out: the house transforming from a silent, dead place with Sean's shouting, Alex's explosions, Raven tumbling across the grass. The two of them arguing.

Erik doesn't answer. He only inspects Charles, in sober, dark grey with a blue tie he's frowning down at. He looks like the other half of him, the son of privilege, instead of the distracted, anxious academic whom Erik, one fateful night, had levitated off to bed when he'd fallen asleep on his paperwork. 

"You always look far too fashionable for me," Charles tells him, a bit of petulance spicing the words as he glances between Erik and himself. "Did you sneak a French designer in in that duffel bag you brought?"

"Let me do that," Erik says gruffly. The gruffness, he tells himself, is because they're running late, not because the affection and longing in his chest has swollen to take away his breath.

"Raven could always get it right." Charles's eyes slide past Erik, the way they do when Raven comes up. She visits, not enough for Charles, grown past him even though she works with him, finding students for the school. She never calls, but postcards appear, written front and back in a tiny hand that Charles can, somehow, read. "I taught myself when I was younger, but could never manage properly… Something about looking in the mirror, watching yourself doing everything in reverse."

Erik bends down and slides the tie under Charles's collar, just beneath where Charles's hair brushes the fabric, soft and clean and laced with a bit of silver. Time has traced out fine lines at the corner of Charles's eyes, added a freckle or two on his nose and cheeks. "I taught myself, too." A four in hand, he decides; there's something about it, the tiniest bit informal, next to the precise line of Charles's pocket square. "I learned not to look."

Charles holds still as Erik crosses the tie over and begins the knot. He smells of minty soap and aftershave. He wears a ring on one finger, a pleasing accent of gold that hums against the silver of Erik's tie clip. This close, his lips are red, his eyes as blue, as ever. Another thing that hasn't changed, Charles being beautiful, still compact and powerful, his presence as overwhelming as it's ever been.

"Shut up," Charles mutters. "It's bad enough I'm letting you haul me all the way downtown after a long week."

"The place should still be standing when we get back." Erik finishes the knot and straightens it, leans back on his heels. "It won't collapse if you go away for an evening, Charles. It won't disappear if you close your eyes."

Charles smiles, soft and bitter. The hand on one armrest shifts a little, as if the urge to reach out had risen up and been suppressed. "I'm still afraid it will happen. Everything's still so new, just starting again." He's not only talking about the school.

"And it will keep going," Erik says. He imagines it, as clearly as he can, the future he's barely dared to start believing in himself.

"Not if I don't get the paperwork done."

"I'm fairly sure that can wait. Our reservations can't." Erik sends a quick, questioning thought at Charles, who sighs and nods. The wheelchair isn't any more pleasant to feel now, but Erik wraps his power around it anyway and lifts it. "Shall we?"

"We shall," Charles says, and sighs, and lets Erik take him off to a night of freedom to a night that, in some other world, they might have had without lost years behind them. 

Another mission: to make those years up, as best he can. If Charles lets him, the way he's let Erik chivvy him into something like a life not defined solely by his own mission.

 _I think I will_ , Charles says once they're settled in the Bentley and Erik's piloting the sleek black behemoth down the drive. The thought comes spiked with warmth like Charles's whiskey, smoky and comforting and familiar, and Erik leans back into the luxury of it, cradled in it and luxuriating in it, and drives into the quiet evening.


End file.
